maratoolElevated Back Lunge
How to do the elevated back lunge
- Position a bar onto a rack at shoulder height loaded to an appropriate weight. Place a short, raised platform behind you.
- Rack the bar onto your upper back, keeping your back arched and tight. Step onto your raised platform with both feet. This will be your starting position.
- Begin by stepping backwards with one leg. Descend by flexing your hips and knees until your knee touches the floor.
- Pause, and extend through the hips and knees to rise up, returning all the way to the starting position before alternating.
Muscles worked
The prime movers are the quadriceps across the front of the thigh, which straighten the knee and, just as importantly, control it on the way back down.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the glutes finish hip extension; the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down.
Every exercise for:QuadricepsGlutesHamstrings
How this movement works
The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.
Every exercise using:Barbell
These train the quadriceps too, using equipment this one does not:
- Elliptical Trainermachine
- Fast Skippingbody only
- Front Squats With Two Kettlebellskettlebell
- Hip Adductioncable
- Hip Flexion with Bandband
Difficulty
Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.
Of the 173 quadriceps exercises in this database, 62 are listed at intermediate level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.